Conventional fault-diagnosis or troubleshooting of a working machine disposed at a work site has usually been performed by the actions of service personnel trained in troubleshooting heading out to the site, performing work for detaching the outer panels of the working machine, running conduction checks on the various sensors and the like, then diagnosing trouble locations, and causes of trouble based on the results of the inspection and in accordance with the experience and knowledge of the service personnel while referring to a repair manual. Next, the service personnel was asked to repair the troubles as requested by the customer as a result of the troubleshooting. Depending on the content of the trouble, sometimes the service personnel could immediately repair the trouble in the site, but other times he had to make the repair while referring to a more detailed repair manual when his experience was insufficient or the trouble was complicated. Further, sometimes parts had to be replaced to repair the trouble. When a detailed repair manual was required or when the inventory of replacement parts had to be examined, he returned to the office.
According to the troubleshooting based on the “Data Collection Device of Drive Machines” disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication (A) No. 7-30977 (Japanese Patent No. 2767363), a body controller mounted on the body of a working machine is connected with an external controller through a communications line, the two controllers communicate, and a troubleshooting program is executed by the body controller and the external controller collects trouble data and diagnoses the trouble based on the trouble data.
The method of service personnel heading out to the work site in which the working machine is disposed to diagnose trouble is troublesome and poor in the efficiency of the maintenance work. Further, when the trouble cannot be immediately repaired on the site, it becomes necessary to return to the office to obtain information of more detailed repair manuals or information on inventory of replacement parts. This is inconvenient for the service personnel and further reduces the work efficiency. In this case, the customer cannot determine when the trouble will be fixed and cannot draw up a work schedule. Further, there was the problem that an estimate of the costs required for repair of the trouble could not be immediately prepared.
With the troubleshooting method disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication (A) No. 7-30977, the work of troubleshooting is simplified and improvement of the work efficiency is aided. However, this method requires that the service personnel transport the external controller to the site, connect the external controller to the body controller mounted in the working machine, and start up a troubleshooting program. In the sense of the service personnel heading out to the site, this method had the same problem as the above-explained conventional troubleshooting method. Also, in view of repairing the trouble the above-mentioned problems are not solved.
On the other hand, in recent years, the working machines have become more diverse in models and design to meet with customer requests. Specifications differ according to the models, and it becomes necessary to prepare manuals or troubleshooting tools, etc. individually for maintenance or repair of the models. Managing the maintenance manuals etc. becomes troublesome and separate work is required for checking inventories or placing orders for the parts for repairing the trouble by referring to parts lists for the different models. Accordingly, time and trouble are required for the maintenance and repair.
Further, recently, there are rental companies owning large numbers of working machines. Some rental companies manage the working machines and maintain and repair them on their own. Even such rental companies suffer from the above problems in maintenance in the same way as the machinery manufacturers.
An object of the present invention is to solve the above problem and provide a maintenance system for a working machine effective for a user such as a rental company independently managing the machines, in which maintenance manuals, part lists, or other data for different models are managed by a model information database of the machinery manufacturer, constructed separately from the maintenance database managed by the machinery manufacturer or rental company, etc., the two databases are correlated on the basis of the model so as to be able to centralize the maintenance work, reduce the work time for maintenance and diagnosis, raise the work efficiency.